Nigel Adams advocates a change of culture in pre-action personal injury protocol
Eleven years ago Lord Woolf produced his final Access to Justice Report. He recommended pre-action protocols to “increase the benefits of early but well-informed settlements which…satisfy both parties”. There is no doubt the protocols and the Civil Procedure Rules (CPR) that subsequently came into force have been hugely successful, but the pre-action personal injury protocol has never specifically applied to cases above £15,000. There has simply been an expectation that practitioners working on such claims will adopt “the spirit if not the letter of the protocol” and follow a “reasonable procedure”. But such loose wording is easily open to abuse.
What happens in a multi-track case if the claimant’s solicitor does not adopt a “reasonable procedure”. And what recourse does an insurer have when any evidence provided is served on a “without prejudice” basis, thus attempting to circumvent its use in negotiation.
Lack of safeguards
The answer is that no safeguards are available to a defendant. Unless and until the claimant serves proceedings and the matter comes under judicial case management, there
